(quasi-)neologisms

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:37 PM -0400 5/9/05, Michael Adams wrote:
>All of these are really nice examples of the phenomenon -- the density
>of examples per year seems to intensify later, but there's a pretty
>straight line along these to later use.  The VERB + much examples are
>also interesting, but the pattern is older and more frequent than ADJ +
>much.  In the Buffyverse, though, speakers stretch the constraints a
>bit, e.g. Respect the narrative flow much?
>
>Last night's episode of "Grey's Anatomy" included a very rhetorical
>"Jealous much?"
>
One possible derivation:

Aa an ellipsis from

You don't obsess much, do you?
You're not jealous much, are you?

both of course interpreted ironically or sarcastically.  The
word-order in the latter is still a bit odd, though, and the end
result of the conventionalized irony is that the negative polarity
item "much" occurs in a superficially affirmative context ("Broken
record much").  Seems like a potential ADS/AS paper lurking here...

Larry